


Chiaroscuro

by Dancains



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, Brief use of some period typical homophobic slurs, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, References to War, Sharing a Bed, canon age gap, film noir references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 23:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15828972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dancains/pseuds/Dancains
Summary: Chi·a·ro·scu·ro (noun) - an Italian artistic term used to describe the dramatic effect of contrasting areas of light and dark in an artwork, particularly paintings. It comes from the combination of the Italian words for "light" and "dark." Film Noir, of all the film genres, is the best example of chiaroscuro. In these films, the chiaroscuro technique was used partially because it was economical, but also to visually suggest the characters' moral ambiguity.





	Chiaroscuro

**Author's Note:**

  * For [behzaintfunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/behzaintfunny/gifts).



> ((My super embarrassingly late contribution to a Gotham Gift exchange due to some technical issues. Hopefully worth the wait...))
> 
> Summary: This is a film-noir inspired historical AU, (set approximately in the late 1940s) which is still aesthetically similar to canon sans the overt superhero/science fiction elements. Oswald is still mayor but took a slightly more traditional path to get there, and for the most part the general public doesn't know just how shady his past is. In this spin on events, Ed isn't a convicted criminal, as far as anyone knows he's simply a forensics technician who quit his job after the mysterious disappearance of his girlfriend, only to be hired as the new mayor's chief of staff despite his lack of political experience. When threats are being made to the mayor's life, Jim and Harvey are assigned as police security, even as they both have reservations about Oswald and Ed's personal ethics, and possibly their rumored romantic affair. 
> 
> Accompanying playlist: https://8tracks.com/babetclaquesous/chiaroscuro-a-film-noir-inspired-jazz-playlist

It had been a gray, gloomy day--of course, what other kind would it have been--when Barnes had summoned Jim and Harvey to his office to entrust them with a special assignment. Jim's lip quirked in a grimace as Barnes went over all the details, the scant light coming in through the blinds behind him making the dust in the air glimmer in a bleak sort of way.

"All due respect, Captain," Harvey had interjected, a restless energy at Jim's shoulder, "But all three of us know the mayor's so crooked he could hide behind a corkscrew--so wouldn't we be better off spending our time protecting some of the actual _innocent_ civilians in this city?"

Jim remembered a moment earlier that same week, when Harvey had quipped that there were probably only a dozen people in the entirety of Gotham put together who had never been behind bars before, but Jim kept that to himself.

Barnes pinched at the bridge of his nose, no doubt sensing the arrival of some detective-induced migraine. "I don't pretend to ague with you there, Bullock, but at the end of the day we don't have any real dirt on the guy, just a couple of minor past charges. Nothing that ever formally linked him to Falcone, or Maroni. And everything he's done since he's been in office has seemingly been on the level. Hell, better than on the level--he's actually doing a bang up job. By Gotham's standard. So, here's another way to look at it, boys...you can't arrest a man who's dead can you? He'll get what's coming to him eventually, but until then, the two of you need to do your goddamn jobs."

Jim knew Harvey didn't care about it either way, wouldn't shed a tear if Cobblepot turned up cold in the North Gotham river in time to make the Gazette's late morning edition, but Barnes was playing it underhanded by appealing to Jim's own hard-and-fast code of ethics.

"Fine," said Jim, already knowing he was going to regret it, "Harvey and I'll do security detail, but just for this one night."

"Jim!" his partner spluttered, but Jim silenced him with a half-hearted elbow to the side. Without another word they were dismissed from the captain's office.

"We're really gonna go and play bodyguards to that little bastard aren't we?" Harvey snapped, the minute the door was shut behind them.

"Yes," said Jim through gritted teeth. When they had made the short trip back to their desks, the once-hot mug of coffee on his own was nearly ice cold. _Great._

"Well this is on you, pal," Harvey grunted, kicking his feet up onto his desk after sitting down. He swiped a case folder from the well-organized stack on Jim's desk--it was the latest investigation they had closed before this Cobblepot nonsense, but final reports still needed to be made.

Squinting in disdain, Jim eyed the pair of mud-caked brown Oxford's that were now in his line of sight, but didn't say anything about them, feeling like he lacked his usual leverage in that moment.

"And if anything goes wrong tonight," Harvey continued, fishing a pack of smokes from his coat pocket, "I'm not gonna let you forget it any time soon."

Looking up from his own papers, Jim caught his eye. Something in Harvey's glance made his mouth go dry, even though there was still that usual tinge of humor in his partner's voice. "I'm sure you won't," said Jim. He took a reluctant swallow of his too-cold black coffee, and got back to work.

 

Lo and behold, everything that night went to shit. Just their luck.

The "red-hood" gang that had been threatening the mayor since his election had come out in full force, interrupting Cobblepot's long self-congratulating speech to some society benefit or another. Harvey, of all people, had been the one to yank him off the stage just in time to miss a hail of tommy-gun bullets. Jim decided that it was a near miracle that none of the civilians had been hit in the blast. 

At least the gang had been clear that the mayor had been their only target. Jim and Harvey had managed to usher him out of a lesser used back door of the venue, their only real back-up plan, along with his insistent and all-too familiar chief of staff, who refused to leave Cobblepot's side.

Now, on Barnes' order, Jim was holed up in some seedy two-star hotel, along with Harvey, Oswald Cobblepot, and Ed Nygma, of all people, until they were given the "okay" from the station that the gang had been apprehended, or they had otherwise deemed that it was safe for the mayor to come out of hiding. 

"This is ridiculous!" Oswald shrieked, for what was probably the tenth time that evening. He was pacing across the small free space that the room had to offer, his bad leg dragging a bit more than Jim thought was usual. "How is being trapped here with the likes of you two supposed to make me feel any safer? I have a perfectly fine security team of my own."

 _You mean the ex-mob thugs you use to bully people twice your size?_ Jim almost asked. Instead he said, "Well, the former head of your security is our main suspect in this red-hood business, so you should be damned grateful we're putting our necks out for you."

"It's not like there aren't other ways we could be spending our evening," Harvey chimed in.

Oswald finally stopped, taking his pocket watch from his waistcoat. "Aren't most of those sad, dingey little cop bars closed by this hour anyway, Detective Bullock?"

Jim was glad Harvey didn't rise to the bait, just gave a nonchalant shrug from where he was sitting at a sparse wooden table in the corner. Jim eyed the rotary telephone sitting on the bedside table, silently willing it to ring. For the sound of some tired desk Sargeant over the phone line to tell them they were off the hook. Instead: silence.

Oswald perched himself on the bed next to where Ed had been sitting and fiddling with the room's radio. Nygma had been tight-lipped up until that point, no doubt acclimated to Oswald's tirades. Ed gritted his teeth at the static as he flicked through frequencies. Unsuccessfully seeking out any news about Oswald's would-be assassins, he eventually left it on some reporter spouting a fluff piece about Joan Crawford's latest motion picture.

"Ed, I need a cigarette," Oswald all but barked, primly crossing one leg over the other. It was only a second until one was in between his lips, and Ed was holding the flame of a glinting silver lighter to it's tip.

Harvey caught Jim's eye, sharing some kind of sardonic, meaningful look that Jim couldn't quite interpret. Perhaps some jab about how Nygma had seemingly overnight become Cobblepot's whipping boy. 

It was no secret that there had been no love lost over the former forensic lab employee's sudden departure from the GCPD, following the disappearance of department file clerk Kristen Kringle, and her former beau Tom Dougherty. According to Nygma, the two of them had split town, looking to elope despite their disapproving families, and abruptly breaking off Kringle's engagement to Nygma in the process.

Jim and Harvey had privately agreed that this entire story had been about six types of suspicious, but without any hard evidence, there wasn't exactly anything that could have been done.

Now apparently playing right-hand man to Gotham's foremost former gangster wasn't doing Ed any favors in the eyes of either of the detectives. It was a mystery how the two had even become acquainted in the first place. Harvey had lamented before that Ed should have at least had the decency to disappear off the face of the earth if he had done what the two suspected of him.

Meanwhile, they weren't sure how much Ed knew of what they suspected. The few times he had already been forced to rub shoulders with the GCPD in the context of his work for the mayor had been awkward to say the least, his chipper, enthusiastic facade having faded and been replaced with what seemed like a sheen of cold, acidic ice. There was something about the smugness of his smile and the dark glint behind his glasses that gave Jim an unpleasant chill.

Currently, the discomfort in the room crackled along with the radio, the wary awkwardness of it all so tangible it could have been cut with a knife. The pattering of heavy rain on the window, a near-constant as of late which had plunged the city into a soup-thick fog, was the only thing to hear besides the faded voice coming over the air waves.

Oswald took another thoughtful drag, apparently listening to the radio with some semblance of attention. "Joan Crawford's my favorite actress," he said to no one in particular. Ed nodded, although he undoubtedly already knew this piece of trivia. He mumbled something about being partial to Barbara Stanwyck.

Even though he knew she had gotten a lot of praise for that "Mildred Pierce" picture, Jim could only remember Crawford as the sly, catty, husband-stealing "other woman" from some movie he must have seen years ago. Maybe it wasn't surprising that was she was a figure Oswald admired.

Jim half expected Harvey to make some crack about his own preference for Lizabeth Scott, or any of the other countless, leggy blondes that occupied the gritty crime pictures he and Harvey would occasionally see on the weekends, but the older detective was still uncharacteristically silent.

"So, what do we now?" asked Ed.

To Jim's mild surprise, Harvey pulled a pack of playing cards from his leather overcoat. "You boys know how to play poker?" From his tone, it was certainly a challenge.

What surprised Jim even more was the mayor's agreement. At Oswald's behest, Ed dragged over the two other wooden chair from the second, adjoining hotel room the GCPD had booked, and soon all four of them were sitting around the dimly lit, round table. It turned out Oswald didn't know how to play poker, and Jim was rusty, only having played a few times with Harvey, so for sake of ease the motley group settled on blackjack.

"I don't know if I want to play for cash, though," Jim muttered, thinking more for his partner's paycheck then his own. He already knew Harvey had gambling debts, and that their other tablemates were probably liable to cheat. "Do we have anything else we could use for chips?"

"Way ahead of you, brother," said Harvey, pulling a bag of peanuts from his coat, shells and all. Jim suppressed a smile, both at Harvey's familiar habits and at how ridiculous the whole situation was.

Oswald raised an eyebrow. "Seems they really do have you detectives working for peanuts."

"Yeah," Harvey deadpanned. "Maybe you can put in a good word for us at the city hall and they'll start paying us in real dough."

Jim thought he almost saw Ed's lips twitch into a humourous smile for just a split second, but it was quickly smothered.

As he began to deal the cards, it gave Jim the opportunity to watch and scrutinize the three--very different--men in front of him.

Oswald, as usual, was over dressed in foppish pinstripes, his hair shining under the single bulb that hung above them, slicked to the side with too much brilliantine. Earlier that night Jim had gotten a whiff of his cologne as he nearly had to strong-arm Oswald into the waiting get-away car that brought them to the hotel. That is, if you could call something that smelled like Gardenias "cologne."

Even though he had said he knew how to play, every so often he would glance over at Ed, who subtly signalled for him to hit or stay. Jim didn't say anything about it, it was perfectly legal to do so in a casino, as long as you were playing with the cards facing up. Though something about making the comparison peeved him, he couldn't help it that the two of them reminded him of his grandparents playing bridge together.

On Ed's say-so, Oswald made a scratching motion with two fingers against the table, signaling for Jim to deal him another car.

"Great," Oswald muttered. It had been an eight, causing him to bust. Jim swiped his bet of two peanuts back into the dealer's pile.

Ed fared slightly better on that hand, choosing to "stay" with his seven and two fives. Besides his attitude, the only immediate difference in his apparence since his GCPD days were his clothes. To say he now dressed better was an understatement. Oswald must have given him a few pointers in that department, or if some of the rumors he had heard about the two of them were true, Oswald probably paid for them to be tailored. Ed's suits certainly had a slimmer fit to them than the loose, boxy look that so many men seemed to favor recently. Someone had evidently taken some care to accentuate the lean, lankiness of his physique.

Jim's stomach churned, as he recalled an overheard conversation between two officers at the station, as they poured over a copy of the Gotham Gazette just day's after Cobblepot's election.

"Looky there," crooned Ackerman, jabbing his finger at one of the photos, "Our very own little Eddie Nygma, right there on the front page. Three guess how he got this cushy job with Mayor Nancy boy here."

His compatriot, Lieutenant Fitts, snorted piggishly, evidently finding Ackerman's insinuations the pinnacle of humor. "A couple of guys told me he had it real bad for that Kirsten girl, you know the one who ran off with Dougherty--wasn't she a tall glass of water--but, anyway, I never believed it. Knew he was a queer right away. Just something about the way he talks. Always gave me the creeps."

"Same here," said Ackerman. "At least we don't have to see his sorry mug around here any more."

Jim accidentally pierced the page he was writing on, putting too much force into his fountain pen. These were men that he worked with everyday. Men who respected him. Jim didn't even want to ponder what they would think of him if they knew what he was thinking just then. If they even had an inkling of the way he felt about Harvey. But no one knew. And Jim was going to keep it that way.

Back in the present, he studied the man in question over the table. The harsh light and dark shadows of the room brought out the weariness of his face, especially the lines that always seemed to be under his eyes as of late, framing pale blue with bruise-violet. It wasn't the first time Jim had wished he could take Harvey away somewhere, out of the city for some time to just relax and recuperate, without mobsters and murderers on their heels. They were both well deserving of it. 

A strand of Harvey's hair, just too long to be quite regulation, fell over his eyes as he studied his cards. Jim's gaze traced the casual motion of his fingers as Harvey brushed it back into place. It made something in his own fingers itch and tingle.

"Jim?" grunted Harvey.

"Hm?"

"I said hit me with another one."

"Right, sorry." He hadn't been able to sleep the night before, and the fatigue was probably starting to affect him. He didn't think Ed or Oswald had noticed the slip, too contained in some silent conversation of their own.

Jim flipped over another card--a king.

"Twenty one," Harvey grinned. Jim gladly paid him his due.

They played for a while, longer than Jim had expected, a curt silence interspersed by the occasional competitive banter.

. Even if the company was far from ideal, it was still a respite from the long hours he had been working the past few weeks. He felt a hollow pang when he thought back to the few times he and other men in his platoon would play cards during their downtime, at least when they hadn't been running for cover from German artillery.

Eventually, it was Oswald who yawned, and surreptitiously pulled out his pocket watch. It was nearing two in the morning. "Is it one of the conditions of my safeguarding that you have to keep me awake all this time, or could I actually use one of these beds that the GCPD are playing a pretty penny for, hm?"

"Suit yourself," said Harvey, "But don't think of going anywhere. I'm certainly not gonna lose my gig just because I couldn't babysit a pint-sized politician. And his little dog, Toto, too," he added, side-eying Ed.

"I wouldn't dream of it, detective," Oswald replied sourly, though Jim thought it was nearly genuine.

Without another word between them, Jim and Harvey shuffled into the next room over, passing through the jack-and-jill bathroom that connected them and shutting their door behind them. Jim flicked on one of the bedside lamps, casting a shallow yellow light into the otherwise dark room. They didn't need to see it to know it was identical to the one they had just been in--the most basic fixtures, and only one bed.

Slipping off his coat, Harvey casually took his gun from its holster and set it on the opposite bedside table. He unbuckled the leather strap and set that aside as well. Jim's eyes couldn't help but follow the movement as Harvey started to unbutton his wrinkled dress shirt.

 

"I suppose you'll say we should sleep in shifts," said Harvey. "Just in case those bastards scram--or in case trouble finds us. They really might still be after Cobblepot, if they haven't put their tails between their legs and scurried back to wherever they've been hiding. Either way I feel like I'm gonna pass out on my feet. I don't think I've slept more than a few hours at a time while we were on that missing persons case, and we only just wrapped that up. First shift sleeping is _mine,_ Jimbo."

He sat heavily on the bed with a grunt and pulled off his shoes, before massaging some unseen ache in his sock clad left foot. Despite the minor aches and pains Jim could feel along his own body, he wished he could soothe any discomfort Harvey was feeling. At times like these he was a rock for Jim, and anchor, bringing him out of the recesses of his head and back into the reality of a situation, sometimes even the humor of it.

I don't, uh..." Jim hesitated, hoping that what he was about to say wouldn't be too out of character. "I don't think that'll really be necessary. The shifts, I mean. If they know whats good for them, the two of them will stay put. I'm pretty beat too, to be perfectly honest, Harv."

Harvey got up again, this time to unfasten his trousers. He eyed Jim curiously as he shucked them off, the attention leaving Jim's mouth dry for the second time that day. "Maybe you have a little more faith in those two worms than I have, but suit yourself. It's nice to know that even the great Jimmy Gordon isn't indestructible. That he needs to sleep sometime too."

Jim only nodded. Feeling awkward at his partner's state of undress, He took off his own suit jacket and started to work on his shirt. It was ridiculous that he should have even been so aware of it, having seen Harvey in much less in the GCPD locker room on more than one occasion.

"Well, with all the time you spent overseas, you certainly shouldn't complain about close quarters," said Harvey, as he pushed back the quilt and got into the room's single queen sized bed.

Jim wasn't the only one who had fought, but he held his tongue. Harvey had enlisted in 1918, when the "war to end all wars" had broken out. He never talked about, and Jim only even knew from an older detective at the station. Jim knew that when the Japanese had made their initial strike on Pearl Harbor in December of '41, Harvey was already two years past the ages of men required to register for the draft. Jim had been thirty-three.

 _Close quarters..._ Jim thought to himself as he got in beside Harvey. That didn't even begin to cover it. He had left his own slacks on, mumbling something about it being a cold night. He imagined harvey in the trenches, a younger man, perhaps naive. Jim bet that he hadn't yet grown into the more rugged look he sported today. He wondered if Harvey ever saw the type of things Jim had done in the army. Had ever taken part in them. Lying on his back in the dark with a safe distance between himself and his partner, he was alone with his thoughts.

When Jim had finally returned to Gotham after his deployment, all he had felt was overwhelming relief. That was, until O'Leary had told him not to write, that they had only done the things they had because thats what men do when there weren't any dames around. Jim had thought they were past that, and the rejection had stung far, far worse than Barbara Kean breaking off their engagement before he had first shipped out. To Jim, it had been more than fervent touches in the dark, sweat and skin and the smell of gunpowder. He thought he had found someone who understood him.

Somehow this brought him Oswald and Ed. There was no single word or action that had brought Jim to this conclusion but it was clear there was something between them. Something _good_ , despite how horrible they both were. It didn't take much to realize that they were codependent, two organism that needed each other, for better or worse. Jim just couldn't understand what fate was trying to pull, why they got to have what Jim so desperately wanted. They didn't deserve it, but at the same time he couldn't truly resent it.

Breaking Jim from his uncomfortable, Harvey whispered to him in the dark: "Did 'ya hear that?"

"What?" Jim did hear something a second later, maybe the groan of a shifting mattress, though not their own.

"Nothing. Except maybe some activity in the next room over. You think there's any credence to it? How Nygma keeps that fancy new job of his?" Jim could practically hear the smirk on Harvey's lips.

 _"Harvey,"_ Jim grunted indignantly.

Harvey chucked. "What? They didn't teach you about that in boy scouts?"  
Jim knew he was being teased, Harvey never gave him a break when it cam to just how uptight he could be, how conservative and sheltered his upbringing had been. But this time he didn't know that his jokes cut a little too deep.

Another sound from the other room, so faint it might have been nothing. Jim's imagination was still running a mile a minute at the implications.

"Well, it's not the worst thing they've done. All things considering," Harvey continued. Jim could see him now, as his eyes adjusted, his gray profile against a black haze, the curve of his noses and lips that Jim knew better than his own. The hints of coffee and liquor and tobacco on his breath. "Embezellment, bribery, torture, murder. I gotta say, a little sodomizing's probably a bit lower on the list."

Jim knew he was wading into dangerous territory. Maybe they both were. "When you put it like that...I can't exactly disagree."

Harvey chuckled, as if it was the most hilarious thing in the world. Maybe their odd scenario was just that. "The things we get caught up in...if we wrote it into a pulp novel people wouldn't even believe the half of it." He probably didn't just mean that night, but the strange escapades, twisted plots and dark shadows that seemed to follow the two fo them wherever they went.

"Yeah well," said Jim, his voice going soft, still raspy but tender, "there's no one else I'd rather be stuck in the thick of it with. And that's the truth."

Harvey turn to face him in the dark, the look imperceptible. Jim realized they were closer now, bare shoulders touching under the quilt. "Me too," Harvey breathed.

"Harvey..." Jim could hear the uncertainty in his own muffled voice.

"Yeah?"

"What was that movie we saw last weekend? With Humphrey Bogart?"

"The Big Sleep?" Harvey grunted in confusion at the shift in conversation.

"And you were saying that it didn't make any damned sense...Bogart and that young actress. That nobody would really want a washed up old detective like that. That it could have been you on the screen and the whole thing wouldn't have been any less plausible."

"Where are you going with this, Jim?"

"You know, I don't have a favorite actress. But Humprey Bogart is my favorite actor."

Something seemed to click, even if Jim couldn't say what he wanted to more plainly. One of Harvey's hands came to his face, calloused fingers gently petting the stubble on Jim's cheek. It swept up his face, petting gingerly at his hair. Jim heard his breath catch. He pushed into the touch, his hand going to Harvey's shoulder as if of its own accord.

Harvey brough their faces even closer. "Here's looking at you, kid," he whispered, before his lips met Jim's. 

They were left with only a second to savor it, when a loud noise brought them suddenly apart. It took Jim a full second to realize it was the phone ringing in the adjoining hotel room.

"I'll-I'll um..." Jim got out of the bed, still mostly dressed. He crossed through the bathroom into the other room with only some slight hesitation.

When he opened the door, Ed was awake, sitting on the side of the bed with the phone to his ear. "Hollenbeck from the front desk," he said to Jim. "They've caught the red-hood gang. I kept him on the line just in case you needed to hear it from him yourself."

"No, it's fine," said Jim, and Ed hung up the phone. Oswald was still sleeping on the other side of the bed, snoring ever so slightly. It was on odd sight, someone so dangerous yet so vulnerable. Ed looked over to him too.

"He said you and Bullock have the rest of the day off. And if the room is paid for, I'd rather not wake him." The clock beside him said it was nearly 5 am.

Jim nodded. An unspoken understanding perhaps. Or a temporary truce.

When he stepped back into his and Harvey's room, his partner was dressed and pulling on his coat, evidently having heard the short conversation. They didn't say anything to each other until they were in the hotel's elevator with its cage-like door shut behind him.

"So..." said Jim.

"You know, it's almost five. We could start the day early, get some hot breakfast at your favorite place on sixth street. It'll be open by the time we can get a cab over there."  
Jim could picture it so clearly he could taste it, enough hot coffee and eggs and toast to feed a starving man. Their usual seats by the front window--maybe the rain would even let up.

He stepped a little closer to Harvey, smoothed down the front of his well-worn leather coat with an errant hand. "And what will we do with the rest of our day off?"

Harvey grinned. "Whatever you want, kid. Whatever you want."


End file.
